iPhone 2G has strong signal but somtimes cannot make calls!

[MerlinWizzard]

Hi, I was hoping someone might be able to help me;

I recently got an iPhone from a friend that has a very strange fault. It can show a very strong signal (5 bars) but will intermittently not make or receive calls and texts.

For example just with the phone sat here on my desk one min it will make outgoing calls and the next it just sits at "calling" with no ring tone for about 45 secs before moving to "Call Failed". Incoming calls sometimes work and sometimes go straight to answer phone. Outgoing texts sometimes fail to send and sometimes work.

Just for a bit of background this is an unlocked 8GB iPhone 2G on firmware 3.1.3. I've tried both Orange and Tesco (O2) sims and both have the same problem. The Wi-Fi and everything else work perfectly and the phone itself is in good physical condition. I have tested the sims in an 16GB iPhone 2G with identical firmware and that works fine.

So any ideas what it might be? I've kind of discounted the sims and the firmware which only really leaves a hardware problem. Could it be a problem with the aerial or would that show a weak signal strength? Is it relatively easy to replace and would you recommend it?

Cheers

Steve

 

[Moi un Mouton]

First off, if it's practical, I would try a DFU clean restore and use it with an O2 PAYG SIMcard, see if it still happens. This is because it may be a glitch in the baseband or some other part of the firmware caused by the unlocking process.

If it's OK on O2, re-jailbreak and unlock. If not, it's probably hardware-related.

 

[MerlinWizzard]

Thanks for this, I've tried as you suggested but still have the same result. I did use a Tesco PAYG Sim but it activated fine so I'm assuming its not the Sim.

Is it worth replacing the aerial?

 

[Moi un Mouton]

I'm not an expert on this, but it doesn't sound like an aerial problem to me, because if it were I'd have expected you to lose the bars. It sounds like it has glitches in its communication process with the cell towers.

Maybe someone can say different or say how a phone with a faulty aerial behaves.

But if it's cheap to do and you know how to, give it a go

PS since it's an Edge phone, does the same happen with loading web pages? If either of us is right in our supposition, that ought to have the same fault, since it uses Edge/GPRS up upload and download data, as well as make calls, and can only do one of them at a time.

 

[MerlinWizzard]

I checked out the web page thing and more weirdness. It will quite happily load up a web page in safari whilst directing incoming calls straight to voice mail! Perhaps GPRS is used for Data and GSM for calls?